Using lasers and nanotech to identify viruses

This development may just revolutionize the way and speed with which virus strains are identified in the field, using a combination of nanorod arrays and lasers.

Researchers Yiping Zhao, Sarat Shanmukh, Yongjun Liu, Les Jones, Richard A. Dluhy, and Ralph A. Tripp have developed a method of creating a silver nanorod array that acts as surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrate which allows microbe detection within a minute. Much faster than traditional chemical methods.

Among the biosensing methods being explored in virus research, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has received interest over the past few years due to its ability to detect even single molecules at the same time as providing structural and quantitative information about the analytes. It has been used to detect bacteria and viruses using either direct spectroscopic characterization or reporter-molecule-sandwich assemblies.

They use a method of fabrication that results in rods created at an oblique angle that aids in the scattering used to detect the microbes.

For the OAD method, we tilted the substrate such that the vapor arrives at close to the grazing angle. This process results in the preferential growth of nanorods on the substrate in the direction of deposition, due to a shadowing effect. Figure 1 shows scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of the optimal SERS substrates that we grew. The overall length of the nanorods was 868 ±95nm, while the diameter of the nanorods was 99±29nm. We calculated the density of the nanorods to be 13.3 ± 0.5rods/μm2 and the average tilt angle 71.3 ± 4.0°.

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